Miss Theodora Part 4

"Any one would look pleased to escape a trying on."

"Oh, you can make light of it. But once when I said I guessed I'd be fitting a wedding dress soon, she colored right up, and said she, 'Oh, we're only friends.'"

"That's nothing."

"Perhaps it was nothing when Mary Timpkins began to fade the very minute she heard Hiram Bradstreet was engaged to a girl he met on the steamer last summer. Why did he go to Europe anyway?"

"Probably because Mary Timpkins wouldn't marry him; for truly, Miss Chatterwits, I'm going to agree with Dr. Jones that she died of typhoid fever."

"Maybe,--after she'd run herself down worrying about Hiram Bradstreet."

"Oh, no. Hiram Bradstreet, worrying about her, fled to Europe in despair, and let his heart be caught in the rebound by that girl on the steamer."

This sensible conclusion, though at the time uttered half in fun, was characteristic of Kate. She was loath to believe that a well balanced girl could die of love. Love in the abstract troubled her as little as love in the concrete. She seldom indulged in sentimental thoughts, much less in sentimental conversation.

In their distaste for sentimentality, Ernest and Kate met on common ground; and even Mrs. Digby, though at one time disposed to discountenance their intimacy, at length decided there was no danger of her somewhat self-willed daughter's falling in love with her penniless cousin. In time, however, as Ernest boy-like, found his pleasure more and more in things outside the house, Miss Theodora and Kate drew nearer together.

The elder woman had always had a certain pleasure in acting as friend and helper to a little circle of poor people, of whom there were so many on the narrow streets descending toward the north. These were not the poor whites to whom Miss Theodora's mother had been a Lady Bountiful, but "darkies," as Diantha called them, of mysterious origin and of still more mysterious habits. They were crowded together in queer-smelling houses, in narrow lanes and alleys, or in the upper stories over shops in the squalid main thoroughfares of the district which some people still call "n.i.g.g.e.r Hill."

"It doesn't seem a bit like Boston," Kate would say, clinging to Miss Theodora's arm while they went in and out of the rickety dwellings, where stout black women, with heads swathed in bandannas, or shoeless children in ragged clothes saluted them respectfully. Although Miss Theodora knew nothing of modern scientific charities, she tried to make reform and reward go hand in hand.

"I feel," she said occasionally, "as if I oughtn't to help Beverly Brown's family when I know the man is drinking; but I can't bear to see those children without shoes, or let Araminta suffer for food with that baby to care for."

"Of course you can't," Kate would answer, emphatically: "and Moses and Aaron Brown are the very cunningest twins any one could imagine, even if they are bow-legged." And then Kate, opening her little silk bag, would display within a collection of oranges, sticks of candy, and even painted wooden toys which she had bought on her way through Charles Street. "Come, Cousin Theodora," she would cry, "put on your hat and coat, and let us go down and see the twins, and let me carry this basket."

Or again: "There isn't any harm in my just getting some of this bright calico for ap.r.o.ns for Araminta, and you don't care if I buy mittens for the twins," she would say entreatingly; for Miss Theodora, always careful of money herself, often had to restrain her young cousin's expenditures, at least in the matter of clothes. As regarded food, it was different.

When Kate, stopping in front of one of the little provision shops, with their fly-specked windows, through which was dimly seen an array of wilted vegetables and doubtful-looking meats, decided to order a dinner for this one or that of her proteges, Miss Theodora had not the heart to hinder. But I will do her the credit to say that she never encouraged the giving of dinners to those whose need was caused by vice. In the future of the dark-skinned boys and girls Miss Theodora took a great interest. She realized that in the public schools they had their opportunity; and she saw with regret that not all who were educated made the best use of their education. Restless, unwilling to take the kind of work which alone was likely to fall to their lot, some of the young girls, educated or uneducated, drifted into ways which the older women of their race spoke of with the strongest disapprobation.

"They's a wuthless lot, the hull of them, and I wouldn't try to do nothing for them if I was you," Diantha often exclaimed, when Miss Theodora admitted how sorely the problem of these dusky people pressed upon her. Yet Diantha herself was almost certain to call her mistress'

attention to the next case of need on which she herself stumbled in her wanderings among her people. Or, as likely as not, when Miss Theodora was sought out by some poor creature in real or pretended misery, the present emergency would overthrow all theories.

In one of the hill streets there was a home for colored old women, holding not a large number of inmates, but still holding, as Kate expressed it, "a very contented crowd"--much more contented, indeed, than many of the dwellers in the "Old Ladies' Home," the refuge for white women who had seen better days.

"I went to see old Mrs. Smith," said Kate one day, speaking of an inmate of the latter inst.i.tution. "She was sitting with her blind drawn, looking as glum as could be. 'Why don't you raise the curtain?' I asked. 'You have such a beautiful view of the river.' 'Oh, yes,' she said, 'beautiful for anybody who likes rivers.' Do you know she'd rather sit moping in a corner all day than try to get some pleasure out of the lovely view across the river from her window! She enjoys being miserable now, just because she has seen 'better days.'"

"There are a great many people like her in the world," smiled Miss Theodora.

"Well, I prefer old Auntie Jane up in the colored women's home. She says that she never was as well off as she has been since she came to the home. She has a little window box with a small geranium and some white elysium in blossom; and she says that it reminds her of the old plantation where she grew up. She can see nothing from her window but houses across the narrow street; but she is a great deal happier than Mrs. Smith with all her view."

[Ill.u.s.tration]

IX.

When Kate accompanied her on her round of visits, Miss Theodora did not penetrate far into the little lanes that zigzagged off from Phillips Street. She kept more to the main road, and seldom took the young girl upstairs, or down into the dingy bas.e.m.e.nts. For in her mind's eye a large place was occupied by Mrs. Stuart Digby, who at any time might end Kate's visiting among the poor. Kate, therefore, had to content herself with restricted vistas of fascinating alleys with wooden houses sloping toward each other at a curious angle, with little balconies of strangely southern appearance; and she sighed that she could not wander within them. She looked longingly, too, at the little church whenever they pa.s.sed it; for Ben, who, rather for entertainment than edification, went there occasionally to the evening prayer meetings, had repeated many amusing speeches made by the colored brothers.

Still, if she could not do all that she wished to, she made the most of what came in her way. She loved to notice the difference between the kinds of things sold in Phillips Street shops and in those of the more pretentious thoroughfare to the north, through which the horse-cars ran to Cambridge. In the former case, eatables of all kinds were conspicuous,--not only meat and vegetables, and especially sausages, but corn for popping and mola.s.ses candy and spruce gum, all heterogeneously displayed in the small window of one little shop. On Cambridge Street, oyster saloons and bar-rooms and p.a.w.n-shops, before which hung a great variety of old garments on hooks, jostled against each other, strangely contrasting with numerous cake-shops, which offered to the pa.s.ser-by a great variety of unwholesome comestibles. From the little windows of the dwelling rooms above the shops, frowsy and unkempt women looked down on the street below, and Miss Theodora usually drew Kate quickly along, as occasionally they traversed it for a short distance on their way to the hospital.

In the same neighborhood was a short street of unsavory reputation, partly on account of a murder committed within its limits many years before, and partly because it held the city morgue. Hardly realizing where she was, Miss Theodora one day was picking her way along the slippery sidewalk, with Kate closely following, when something dark crossed their path. They stopped to make way for it. It was a grim, indefinite something, which two men had lifted from a wagon to carry into a neighboring building--a something whose resemblance to a human body was not concealed by the dark green cloth covering it. Then they knew that they were near the morgue; and while the elder woman was regretting that she had brought Kate with her, she heard a voice speak her name, and, turning, saw Ben Bruce but a few steps behind.

"Isn't it late for you ladies to be in this part of the city?" he exclaimed as he overtook them, and they realized that it was almost dusk.

"We are not timid," smiled Miss Theodora; "but we shall be glad of your company, Ben. We stayed longer than we meant to stay at the hospital, and I know that I ought not to have kept Kate so late."

"I wasn't thinking so much of the time as the place," said Ben. "Some way I do not like to have you and Miss Kate wandering about in these dirty streets--at least alone."

"I suppose you think that we would be better off with any slip of a boy.

But truly we do not need a protector, although we shall be very glad of your company home."

"I do not mean safety exactly," answered Ben; "but it does not seem to me--well, appropriate for you and Miss Kate to go around into all kinds of dirty houses," and he glanced at Kate's pretty gown and fur-trimmed coat.

"Oh, it does not hurt my clothes at all," Kate answered, as he glanced at her dress. "I have only my oldest clothes on to-day, and I've been in a very clean place, too. I'm sure nothing could be cleaner than the hospital."

"Well, you can turn it into fun, but you know what I mean," said Ben.

For like many another young man, he felt that tenderly bred women should be kept ignorant of the unsightly parts of a city. Thus as they went up the hill Ben and Kate kept up their merry banter, until they reached Miss Theodora's door.

"Come in to tea with us. Ernest will be glad to see you," said the elder woman. But Ben shook his head.

"Thank you very much, but they expect me home."

Nevertheless, he went inside for a little while, and sat before the open fire in the little sitting-room,--Miss Theodora allowed herself this one extravagance,--and heard Kate humorously relate the adventures of the afternoon.

"I have brought," she said, "a bottle of old Mrs. Slawson's bitters. I feel guilty in not having any of the many diseases they are warranted to cure, but I shall give the bottle to our cook, who is always complaining, and keeps a dozen bottles sitting on the kitchen mantelpiece. You know about Mrs. Slawson, don't you, Ben?"

"Oh, she's the old person who made so much money out of a patent medicine."

"Yes, and then married a 'light-skinned darky,' as she called him, who ran away with it all. It is great fun to hear her tell of the large number of people she has cured. Why, the greatest ladies in Boston, she says, used to drive up in their carriages to patronize her."

"Why doesn't she keep up her business now?"

"Well, she is too old to continue it herself, and she does not wish any one else to have her formulas. She has just enough money to live on, and once in a while she has a few bottles put up to give away to her friends. My visits to her are purely social, not charitable, and this is my reward"--and Kate displayed a clumsy package in yellow wrappings.

Then Ernest came in--now a tall lad looking younger than Kate, though a year older--and welcomed Ben, and begged him to spend the evening. But Ben, resolute, though reluctant to leave the pleasant group cl.u.s.tered around Miss Theodora's fire, hurried off just as the clock struck six.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

X.

His father opened the door for him when he reached home,--his father in his s.h.i.+rt sleeves, encircled with an odor of tobacco. With an eye keener than usual, the boy noted particularly, as if seen for the first time, things to which he had been accustomed all his life--the well-worn oil-cloth on the hall, the kerosene lamp flaring dismally in its bracket. How different it all was from the refinement of Miss Theodora's home,--for although Miss Theodora's carpets were worn and even threadbare, and, except in the hall, she was as sparing of gas as Mr.

Bruce himself, the odor of cooking never escaped from Diantha's domain.